


What we had, bring it back now

by Elisexyz



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Pregnancy, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 07:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13899657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: “The father of my child is a traitor,” she lets out, her voice trembling slightly on the last word. “I’d rather it not be a dead traitor. Just go.”





	What we had, bring it back now

**Author's Note:**

> I've never been a big fan of pregnancy storylines or of this trope in fics. But. Somehow. I have like four fics in my pc that include it. Because I am the least coherent person ever. For more fun facts, you can find me on Tumblr as [heytheredeann](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com).  
>  Also, this contains references to Ward's suicide attempts, and, just to be clear, Skye's reaction to them is _not_ what a psychology textbook would recommend.

Skye can say, in all honesty, that she’d thought she had reached the peak of rage when she’d found out that she’d fallen in love with a carefully constructed lie to gather intel on SHIELD.

There were other feelings involved, a chaotic mess of betrayal and hurt and sadness and shock, but those were easily pushed aside for the time being, when she was too busy letting out all her anger – not that Grant’s pleading eyes made the job actually _easy_.

Now, though, marching down the corridors of the base and heading straight to Vault D, fingers wrapped up around her tablet and her other hand lying on her stomach, mostly out of habit, she’s pretty damn sure that she’s never been _this_ pissed.

Probably the fact that it’s aimed at _more_ than one person doesn’t help, but Grant is the only one available at the moment and the main culprit, so he’ll have to deal with the blunt of it.

Not that Skye is sorry in the _least_ , she wants to punch him in the face until she can’t recognize him anymore.

When she lifts the veil blocking out sound and visual from his cell, she’s still half-way through the stairs, and his face lights up the way it always does when he sees her. She doesn’t give him the time to get a word in.

“Are you out of your mind?” she yells. She can feel her heart pounding, and she thanks god that she hasn’t turned May’s heart monitor on before starting with her snooping around to find out what Coulson has been trying to keep from her – she’s can’t do any heavy training, but May is still guiding her through some stuff that doesn’t involve heavy-lifting, and, unsurprisingly she’s particularly fond of relaxing techniques to keep emotions in check and all that very frustrating stuff.

Grant frowns a bit and keeps staring at her, as if looking for the right answer not to have her blow up on his face right now.

“Skye,” he says, carefully. Even before he continues, she _knows_ that it’s going to be the wrong answer. “I don’t think you should get worked up.”

Alright, she’s going to get that barrier down and break his face. “Oh, look at that, too late, I am _very_ worked up,” she yells. “What were you _thinking_?”

Her eyes slip on his forearms, and she feels her stomach turning at the sight of the fresh scar on one side and still freshly stitched up cut on the other. It’s a good thing that she immediately saw red, or she’d probably be sitting on the floor and crying her eyes out right now.

“Oh. This,” he says, noticing her gaze. His tone is so casually surprised, as if he’d genuinely _forgotten_ what exactly he tried to do, and not even just _once_ — “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he adds.

“You weren’t—” she echoes, chuckling humourlessly, trying to hold onto the fury that possessed her as soon as she got her hand on the security footage from the infirmary – since some clips of Vault D had _mysteriously_ been tempered with –, but it’s fading all too fast. “Newsflash, Ward,” she says, trying to sound snappish and angry the way she was just a few moments ago. “You are gonna be a father, you _can’t_ afford not to think clearly.” It doesn’t come out quite as flaming as she would have hoped.

“I know,” he says, softly. He takes a step forward, getting closer to the invisible wall between them, and he’s smiling the way he does only when it’s just the two of them. “I’m sorry,” he adds.

Skye’s eyes are tingling in a very insisting and annoying manner, but she supposes that now wouldn’t be the right time to just start crying all over the place.

“Why?” she asks. It’s tiny and strangled and it reminds her all too much of when he sat her down and tried to explain his allegiance to Garrett and Hydra, how he owed him _everything_ but he wouldn’t hurt her – them –, how he’d protect them both if she just _let_ him— Back then, she felt betrayed on so many levels she couldn’t count them. Now, she wants to scream because she _knows_ the answer and she hates it _so_ much—

She hasn’t come and seen him in more than a month. She’s just been so overwhelmed by everything, by Jemma running tests on her to monitor the course of the pregnancy, by Fitz looking at her like she’s the one who pushed him out of that plane – what did she expect? She’s carrying around a piece of the person who _did_ –, by Coulson looking at her like she’s some poor fragile thing— all this while working her ass off to compensate for the fact that she can’t go in the field – not that anyone _expects_ her to compensate for anything, she just doesn’t want to feel _useless_ –, reading articles on pregnancies and babies and parenting, realizing that she’ll have to do it all alone because the father of her baby is a back-stabbing _traitor_ —

She got pissed at him. More than she previously was.

Coulson had been using updates on the baby and the pregnancy, reported by Skye herself, to get intel out of Ward. He’d had the decency to look ashamed when he asked her to do it, but the truth is that Skye didn’t mind all that much.

For all his crimes and all the reasons why she should loathe him with every fibre of her being, Skye has to admit that he did protect them. Even if she didn’t show any interest in being on his side, even as she was running from him as fast as she could— he came between her and Mike and he didn’t allow anyone to touch her.

For a second, that had given her hope that he’d make the right choice.

He didn’t, but it still _says_ something— It has to. Grant cares about her. About their child. And a traitor father is better than none. God knows how much time Skye has spent wishing to know her parents, whatever awful things they may have done. God knows how little it mattered to her.

So yes, she accepted to use her child as a bargaining chip because it gave her a solid excuse to have Grant involved in everything. Because she _wanted_ to, even if she shouldn’t have. Even if she often just wanted to scream and shake him until he realized just how _badly_ he’d fucked up.

And then, during this last month— she just felt so _alone_. And it was all because of _him_. Because of that bastard who lied to her and betrayed them all and gave her something that made her so scared but also so _happy_ — only to take all that happiness away with his stupid confession. Only to almost kill two of her closest friends.

 _It was supposed to float_ , he’s told her, over and over. Thing is, she knows it was. She looked it up, she _knows_. She also knows that she should question his word, that she should talk herself into believing that _he_ didn’t know, that he was just trying to cross them off— and yet, she can’t help believing him. Which makes it even harder to look at Fitz and Jemma in the eye.

That’s Grant’s fault too.

So, yes, she’s stopped seeing him. She stormed in Coulson’s office and declared that she wouldn’t do any of that anymore, that she wouldn’t let Ward get his hands on her _child_ , now or ever, that he had no right to ask or know anything.

She watched the footage, when Coulson went down in her place for the first time. Grant’s face didn’t give her the boost of satisfaction that she’d hoped for. Revenge only made her angrier, more restless, more frustrated. Because nobody was happy and it was all _his_ fault.

She started spending more time travelling around than working on base – it’s hard to stay away from the security footage when it’s right there, even if watching it doesn’t do her any good.

So, yes, she cut him off. Abruptly. She was _pissed_ , and it’s so incredibly _unfair_ that he wouldn’t let her be angry after what he did without—

“It was just hard, Skye,” he says, his voice morbid. “Being here—” _Not seeing you_. “It can be overwhelming.”

“It’s no cakewalk for me either, believe me,” she snaps. She can barely see anything, there are just too many tears. She resolves to blinking to let them fall and wiping them away from her face as fast as possible. She tries to take a deep breath, but the only thing she manages is a sharp intake and a strangled sound that resembles a sob.

“I know,” he says. He looks _pained_. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” he adds, offering another benevolent smile. Skye hates it. He should be angry, he should yell so that she can yell back and then convince herself that he’s just a _monster_.

“I was angry,” she explains. He didn’t ask for a clarification, but she’ll give it to him anyway. Maybe she will manage to make him feel just a fraction of the guilt that’s overwhelming her as her eyes keep running to his wrists – and it’s _unfair_ , he shouldn’t have done that, he shouldn’t want to _die_ , she has a right to be pissed. “I _am_ angry,” she corrects. “Because I’ll have to do this on my own.”

He sighs, then he gives her a brief nod.

“All because you had to follow that— that _psychopath_ to the ends of the Earth,” she adds, more vehemently. If her feelings for Grant are complicated, she feels nothing but hatred for John Garrett. She doesn’t miss the way Grant tenses at the mention. She doesn’t miss the brief flash of outrage on his face either, and she almost hopes that he’ll jump to his mentor’s defence. “I hope he was worth it,” she adds, more quietly. “Because you gave _us_ away— for _him_.” _And he’s dead, he’s_ dead _, you bastard_.

“Skye,” he calls, and there’s so much sadness in his eyes that she really has no idea how she’s supposed not to believe him. “I regret it every day. You don’t know how much.”

She inhales sharply, reflexively wiping away some more tears because her face still feels wet. She makes it look casual when she pulls up her tablet and digits the code. A couple of seconds, and the barrier separating them is gone.

Grant frowns, standing still. “Skye—?”

She doesn’t let him ask whatever it is he wanted to ask, just shaking her head and closing the distance between them as soon as possible. She goes to rest her head against his chest, her arms wrapped around his back and her fingers sinking in his clothes.

It takes just a second for him to hug her back. She doesn’t fit perfectly in his arms anymore, because her belly is starting to get in the way. She wonders what it would be like to hug him nine months pregnant – not that she’ll find out.

“I missed you,” he says, gently rubbing her back and laying a kiss on the top of her head. She’s missed him too. She’s not sure where that places her on the moral spectrum.

She pulls back a bit, and he lets her. She swallows before grabbing his left hand and gently removing it from her shoulder to examine the damage up-close. She wants to throw up.

“Skye—” he calls, his tone placating as if he expected her to explode again any moment. She wishes it was all as simple as those few minutes when there was space for nothing but anger. Her fingers delicately brush over the scar.

“Just,” she says, her voice thin, while raising her eyes to meet his. “Just don’t do it again. Please.”

His slips twist into a reassuring smile and he bends forward slightly, to get closer to her eye-level. “I promise,” he says.

 _I’ll never lie to you_.

She believes him. At least, she believes that he’s being honest right _now_. But what good does it do? This is not a promise that you can be sure to keep. She’s seen him deteriorating in there, coming back to life just a little bit when she came to visit.

What happens when their child is born? What happens when they’ll be too young to come down there, too young to _understand?_ What happens if the imprisonment gets too much and the treats become too little? What then?

She can’t watch him die. She can’t orphan her child.

He should pay. He should spend the rest of his life in a cell. He’s a _murderer_ – she watched him agonize on the floor once, and she couldn’t let him go; she watched him bleed everywhere on that security footage, and the horror she felt didn’t crush her only because she was quick to turn it into anger; she’s weak and pathetic and she can’t stand the idea of watching him die.

She pulls him in for another hug. His hand slides down on her hip and moves to her stomach, and it’s slow enough that she could stop it if she wanted to, but too fast for her to decide _if_ she actually wants to. It sends a shiver down her spine and she realizes that it’s the first time that he’s had a chance to do that.

She feels his chest vibrating with a joyful little chuckle. It makes her throat constrict.

She can’t watch him die.

“The base is almost empty,” she whispers, before she can stop herself. Her stomach is twisting in guilt and anticipation. “You can run.” She knows that the cameras won’t pick up on the conversation if she keeps the volume down. She can’t believe she’s doing this.

He tenses against her, probably because of the surprise.

“Just make it look like I’m not in on it, okay?” she adds, with a self-deprecating chuckle that she hides by sinking her face lower in his clothes.

“You aren’t serious,” he whispers back.

“The father of my child is a traitor,” she lets out, her voice trembling slightly on the last word. “I’d rather it not be a dead traitor. Just go.”

Grant inhales sharply before pulling her closer and holding her a bit more tightly. She hates him because his touch both reminds her of just how much she’s incapable of letting him go and of how _angry_ she is at him for making all the wrong choices.

“I’ll contact you,” he whispers in her ear.

She doesn’t have time to react, because he just spins her around and pushes past her, moving fast enough that she panics for a couple of seconds, trying to find the balance on her feet. When she’s stable again, he’s disappearing behind the door.

She just watches without moving a muscle, and she feels shaken enough that she doesn’t have to fake any emotional reaction to Ward’s supposed escape. She stumbles towards his bed, dropping heavily on it and sitting with her hands on her lap.

He’ll make it out, because he’s that good. She’ll get an earful from Coulson for taking down the barrier, but she’ll handle it just fine, considering what he kept from her. The father of her child is a murderer and a traitor and she just set him loose. God help her.


End file.
